


safe and sound

by ladyrose (orphan_account)



Category: Red Dead Redemption (Video Games)
Genre: Drama, F/M, Gen, Historical, Period Typical Attitudes, Period-Typical Sexism, Romance, Unplanned Pregnancy, Unresolved Tension
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-05-20
Updated: 2019-05-20
Packaged: 2020-03-08 19:16:56
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,800
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18900958
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/orphan_account/pseuds/ladyrose
Summary: He comes into her life like a whirlwind.She finds she’s left putting pieces together in his wake.





	safe and sound

**Author's Note:**

> tumblr: morgan-arthur

She felt eyes on her before she even turned around.

As heavy and tangible as though a hand were on her shoulder.

She paused, fingers halfway through the knot on her apron and glanced over her shoulder, scanning the room.

The midday crowd had long since dwindled. Tables, now vacant, cleared and the linens folded neatly atop the wood. The few that remained were the start of the sort that would come into the restaurant from there on out. Those looking for a quick sandwich or a coffee, or a place to read and chat with friends. 

Her eyes flew across this with familiar quickness before they settled on _him_.

Broad shouldered and wearing three days worth of beard growth. Sat near the back of the room with a handsome, neatly dressed gentleman with hair the color of corn silk, reading aloud from a newspaper.

But _him_. 

They lock eyes for a heartbeat before he’s dropping his gaze back to the empty cup in front of him. And she turns then, enough that she can still see from the corner of her eye but also enough to make the work of her apron seem like it had her full attention. When she does, she can just see the ever slight movement of his head as it turns her direction again.

“Arthur, you listening to me?” His companion chuckles.

“Yeah, I’m listening.” It’s a slow rumble, words falling in a relaxed tandem that she’s heard from that one man that came through those parts from down south. Whatever they say next, she doesn’t hear.

But she has a name for the stranger.

_Arthur._

* * *

 

He comes two days later and orders a coffee and a watercress sandwich.

He brings in the morning rain, shivering as he drops in the same seat he had last time, rubbing his hands together briskly and looking around the room for something.

The dining room was empty at that hour. Save for her of course. She returns the cleaning bucket to the counter and rounds it with a nervousness she can’t quite place or all together understand.

“Morning to you, sir,” she says when she’s close enough to smell the damp and something smoky radiating off his person.

“Morning to you, miss,” he says, and fidgets with the cuff of his jacket as a deep flush creeps up his neck.

“What can I get for you today?”

“Just a coffee,” he supplies readily. “A-and a watercress sandwich.”

Before long he’s taking his meal and she’s trying to look busy, though she’s distracted every so often by the twisted look on his face that he tries to smooth over whenever she lifts her head from the baseboards.

“Are you displeased with anything, sir?” She asks after she catches him scowling down at his sandwich for the umpteenth time.

“No, I just...” he sighs. Returning the offending food gingerly to the plate and worrying at the inside of his cheek. “I just...was wonderin’ if you’d be very offended if I asked for your name.”

She blinks.

He flushes again.

“Eliza. Eliza Whitman.”

He nods once. Brings his hands on the table, then to his lap. Then back again.

“Arthur. It’s a pleasure.”

“The pleasure is all mine, Arthur,” Eliza smiles. And that was the first time she saw him smile too.

(Much much later under starlight and with the rocker Gretchen kept on the porch creaking under their shared weight, he would admit that he never had a watercress sandwich before then, nor did he know what a watercress even was.

 _Did you like it?_ She had asked when her laughs had subsided to hiccups.

 _Hell no_ , he grinned. _But I think you knew that_.)

* * *

 

He has a habit of disappearing for long bouts of time and returning with sightly bruises and cuts.

He makes it his business to stop in for coffee and a different sandwich when he’s in town, and comes to greet Eliza by name when he does. He comes in one day with a jagged, pinkish sort of cut distressingly close to his jugular, though he loiters near the door and shoots her the toothy, crooked sort of smile she’s come to recognize with him.

“Could you be spared, Miss Eliza?” He asks, rocking on the soles of his feet when she hesitates. “Or...would you wanna be?”

“Would I w—Are you asking me to go somewhere with you, Arthur?”

“Only for a walk to the square. It’s a real nice day out.”

“It ain’t proper to run around town with men when I should be working.”

He hums, running a hand absentmindedly down the scar on his throat and turns sideways in the door.

“I understand, miss. My apologies.”

“Don’t you _start_ with that ‘miss’ stuff again,” Eliza sighs. “Let me go ask. Wait here.”

They stay out until late afternoon.

* * *

 

Her father had been a pastor and taught her in the ways of reading and writing with the aid of the Bible. But never anything secular. _A seed will sprout and grow only as well as its nurtured_ , her father would say. _And many of these newfangled books cannot nurture ones mind as needed._

Eliza finds she likes romance novels.

She finds herself daydreaming sometimes of what she would like her life to look like. She decides early on that she would very much like to marry and have a family all her own. She’d like a fine little house by a creek with two sheep and a shepherd dog, and a husband who loves her. She’d like to have children, too. And teach them well.

This dream, as vivid and close as anything, she held very dear. And some days when she swept out the fireplace ash, or helped Gretchen in the kitchen crimping pies, or hung the linens to dry, she’d hold on to this dream as though it were a lifeline. _This wasn’t forever_ , she’d think. This restaurant, the room she took above it, the baseboards and their penchant for collecting dirt...

_One day, I’ll be something new._

Arthur makes a low sort of grunt in the back of his throat and stretches his legs down the back steps of the restaurant.

“What about you?” She asks. “What do you want to be?”

“I don’t know,” he answers and she gets the sense that he’s being honest. Something she finds she appreciates. “I don’t think that far. I’m already _being_.”

“You never told me what you do,” Eliza muses to the back of his head.

He makes that noise again, lights a cigarette, and asks her about her day.

It’s later that night, right before she lets herself succumb to sleep that she realizes he never answered.

* * *

 

Gretchen pulls her aside one day before they open. Tugs her onto the back stairs that led to their personal quarters and grips her hands in that way people do when they are about to tell you bad news. Like your father died and all those debts he owed are in need of paying. Like you’d have to take a job at some restaurant in some nameless Illinois town if you’ll be wanting to be free of them. 

“It’s not right, ‘Liza,” she says quietly. “I’m only telling you because you’re like a daughter to me. It’s just not right.”

“What isn’t right?”

“Running around town with...” Gretchen stopped, peeking around the corner of the doorframe before leaning in closer. “There’s talk about your gentleman friend. And he’s not much of a gentleman besides...”

“What do you mean?” 

“He runs with some men that aren’t ideal, is all I’m saying,” Gretchen gives her hand a quick squeeze. “Be careful, alright?”

Eliza nods.

Gretchen gives her a gentle smile and leaves her on the stairs. Questions in desperate need of answers swirling in her head until she thought it’d make her split in two. 

* * *

 

He’s gone for a month and returns free of any visible markings, though his face seems dark, like the sky before a storm, and he’s a lot more still than he normally is.

She tells him she’s missed him.

He swallows and tells her he’s missed her too.

Eliza drums his fingers on the table. Thinks maybe another time would be best. But no time was better than the present.

“What do you do for work, Arthur?” She asks.

“What d’you think I do?” He asks back. Not in sarcasm or to tease her. His head is tilted in curiosity and he’s shoulders relax just a little.

“A farmhand?”

“No,” a huff of air that might have been a laugh.

“A cowboy?”

“No.”

“A deputy? A trapper, a blacksmith?”

He smiles sadly. Shakes his head.

“There’s a five hundred dollar bounty on my head in Iowa,” he says in a half whisper to his plate. “That’s what I do.”

They sit in the empty dining room of the restaurant in silence for a long time. The clock in the kitchen and the jaunty music from the saloon down the street the only sound. 

He moves suddenly to readjust himself in his chair and Eliza jumps only because she wasn’t expecting it, though he freezes and settles her with a look she can’t quite decipher.

“I should be headin’ out now,” he mutters eventually.

“Now?”

“I’m sorry.”

“I forgive you.”

“Don’t,” it’s a warning. Then, much quieter this time, “doesn’t it bother you?”

Maybe in another time it would’ve. Somewhere that wasn’t there. If they weren’t them. If _he_ weren’t _him_ , this roguish sort of Byronic hero, it might’ve bothered her. But it was late. And she’s missed him. And it doesn’t bother her.

* * *

 

The tailor down the street had a dress in the window. A pale cream calico with little black flowers.

She wears it in her mind.

Rocking in a chair by a wide hearth, working hard on a quilt or maybe a bonnet, and he comes in with a coat she’s made him and an armful of logs.

And she’d ask him about his day and she’d tell him about hers. And he’d give her crooked smiles when she says something that amuses him and that dark look wouldn’t ever come back. And for a long time he didn’t have a face or a name, but now he does. Even in the privacy of her imagination she feels silly about it. 

“What are you grinnin’ about?” He asks one day. 

She rolls the beads of the bracelet he gifts her between her fingers and shrugs.

“Just thinking, is all.”

* * *

 

She’s at her wash basin when it happens. 

Gretchen comes running, pinning back her hair quickly and rubbing her back.

When the feeling subsides and her stomach is empty, she’s forced back into bed and given some bitter sort of tea Gretchen swears is perfect for this sort of thing.

But this sort of thing comes frequently. 

Gretchen corners her one day with tears in her eyes and voices her diagnosis.

Eliza hadn’t been sick that morning, but she feels it now.

* * *

 

Someone’s bought the calico dress. Eliza realizes it as they walk past.

Arthur follows her gaze and arches an eyebrow.

“See somethin’ you like?”

“No,” she says. “Just looking.”

* * *

 

“Will I ever be able to meet your friends?” She asks him one day. She thinks maybe it’s her imagination, but she can see progress in the way of her mid section. She ties her apron loosely and keeps her hands awkwardly clasped in front of her. If he notices, he doesn’t say anything.

“I don’t think it’d be right,” he says after awhile, watching her expression carefully. “For your own good, ‘Liza.”

She wants to tell him she’d never cash in on his bounty. She’d never judge him or his group. He could trust her. Didn’t he see that? That he could trust her?

She nods and lets it be.

* * *

 

He’s sentimental, he is. 

It’s a full year into their relationship. If she can call it that. He asked her a month in if she’d be his and she had said yes, though she didn’t know what she was agreeing to. 

He gifts her little things from his travels and shows her new sketches in his journal. She told him she hadn’t known he journaled and he only shrugged it off with a blush blooming high on his cheeks.

She hadn’t known him to tell her much about himself aside from that he was an outlaw, and she figures he does it on purpose in some backwards sort of chivalrous way. She means to ask him, but first, there’s something she means to _tell_ him. She waits for him to finish eating and reaches for his hand.

Automatically, to her heart’s rapid staccato, he takes it.

“I’ve been meaning to tell you something,” she starts. She’s been practicing in her room to the walls for days on end to the point the words sound as casual as though she were asking him what he thought about those strings of robberies a town over. 

“Yeah?”

“Yes. But you have to promise to not be angry.”

He studies her, rubs a hand across his jaw.

“I promise.”

“I’m p—I’m going to have a baby. And it’s yours. _Ours_ , I mean.”

He blinks. Takes in a sharp breath and drops her hand in favor of bringing it alongside the other, rubbing his entire face now.

“A-and before you say anything,” Eliza continues, fighting back tears. “I know what you are. Wh-what you do. I’m not asking you to...I don’t expect...you don’t—“

He reaches for her hand again and looks her dead in the eye with an earnestness she can’t remember seeing on him before.

“I’m fine. I’m _fine_ , Eliza. But are _you_ okay?”

She breaks down right then and there and he stays with her and she thinks that maybe that counts for something. 

_Something_.

Maybe.

* * *

 

She can’t work as a waitress after awhile, though Gretchen allows her to stay in the room above the restaurant until she’s back on her feet again. 

She spends most of the time sitting in the kitchen peeling potatoes or doing work that allows her to sit, and she finds in the midst of this, that her dreams are evolving of their own accord. But such is life, she thinks, and these things are bound to no one and nothing. Free to come and go and change as they please.

She can’t help feeling a little bitter about it though.

Arthur disappears and comes back and disappears and comes back. He’s full of gifts and stories. Crooked grins and bright eyes. She doesn’t tell him that around town, some of the women began to talk. She doesn’t tell him that as she begins to show more and more that the whispers grow and grow. An unwed mother isn’t uncommon, though they make her feel like one.

She’d never dare to bring up marriage with him. It was an unspoken promise on her end. She finds she’s made a lot of promises to him that he doesn’t even know about, and she wonders if he has any like that for her. If he ever turns down other women, or if he turns his back on anyone hinting ill on her name, all like she does for him.

One day in the kitchen, he pulls her onto the chair he’s occupying and rests his chin on her shoulder.

“I won’t leave you or our child wanting, ‘Liza,” he says.

She believes him. 

And for a while, the gossip around town doesn’t matter anymore.

Only Arthur.

 _Her_ Arthur.

* * *

 

A week after her twenty first birthday, she has Isaac. A plump little thing with a head full of dark hair.

Arthur isn’t there, but Gretchen is. The tailor, a mild mannered, quiet man comes around too with a pretty linen baby gown and words of encouragement. 

“Congratulations to you, Miss Whitman,” he says, holding the cup of tea Gretchen gives him with both hands. “If you need anything, anything at all...you’ve friends around.”

“Thank you,” Eliza says. “Both of you. Truly.”

The tailor stays per Gretchen’s coaxing for dinner in the kitchen. And between the meal and the warmth of the wood stove, and the cheerful conversation, Eliza finds she can be happy with this. 

* * *

 

They begin to argue.

It starts small.

He’s holding Issac too tight, he’s tracking mud in. She’s snapping at him, she doesn’t give him the time of day anymore. They always make up and find themselves intertwined shortly after on a chair or the loveseat in the private area of the restaurant, watching Isaac sleep and talking. Though those were the small arguments.

The bigger ones come without warning. A crash of thunder, and a streak of lightning in an otherwise empty sky.

Gretchen is out and he’s napping on her bed as she rocks Isaac. His journal is where he left it on the nightstand, and there’s not much to do in the way of rocking a baby, so she takes it to look at his drawings.

She finds something else entirely.

He’s woken to the leather binding of his journal meeting his cheek with a focused force, and he’s launching himself upright before he’s fully awake. 

“ _Was I a distraction?_ ” Eliza is screaming. Issac wailing from his crib against the wall.

“What are you talking about?” He demands, and catches her wrist as she’s about to launch a candle stick next. “Eliza! What are you talking about?”

“ _Mary_! The woman you love! The woman you _still_ love!”

His grip loosens and the candlestick hits the floor.

“Eliza...” he begins helplessly, though she’s shaking her head. Tears rushing like twin streams down her cheeks.

“What am I to you?”

“I love you. I do.”

“You’re a liar, Arthur Morgan.” 

She turns her back to him, going to the crib to shush Isaac and he takes that as his cue to leave.

* * *

 

They don’t speak for awhile after that.

And then they do. Or rather, he comes with flowers and eyes bloodshot and tells her the truth. At least she thinks it’s the truth as it was never a story to begin with. 

“She didn’t love me back,” he concludes. “Not really. I don’t think it’s was ever love if someone doesn’t love you back.”

“You can love someone or something without it loving you back,” she says with a frown. 

He doesn’t get it.

She doesn’t press him any further.

* * *

 

He sends her money or delivers it in person when he’s around. 

It’s no little money either. What she keeps after paying Gretchen and the debtors is still a nice amount. She records all of this and brings it to him when he’s in town again.

“Isaac and I can get by on _half_ of this, Arthur,” she says. “You just...worry about _you_. Okay?”

“I got a duty here. To you,” he nods at the baby in her arms. “Him.”

“We’re not a duty, we’re your family.”

His shoulders square, and she gets the sense that this, like last time, was something he just didn’t get.

He leaves shortly after.

* * *

 

The gossip in town turns from her, to more urgent news. The robberies that had been sprouting up off and on in the neighboring town are making their way over to the one they were in, and the thieves in question were known for their violence. 

Isaac turns four and takes after his father in term of features and artistic endeavors. He has her complexion and hair, but Eliza recognizes his smile and the way he frowns as being all Arthur.

Arthur takes him out on little excursions too. Fishing in the nearby pond, or for rides that do nothing more than induce Eliza’s anxiety. While she has time to herself, she puts her room in order and helps Gretchen in the kitchen. It’s not a house with two sheep. She has no husband and no beautiful calico dress, but it’ll do. Survival will always have to do.

She sells her books and buys a new coat for Isaac and a revolver, and persuades Arthur to teach her how to use it in the wake of the robberies. Her aim isn’t perfect, but it’s decent. Arthur instructs her to keep it near her at all times, so she tucks it beside her money in her drawer, and keeps the drawer itself cracked open just an inch. 

When he’s not teaching her to shoot, he’s fretting. Over Isaac, over her, over—and these names she’s learned once when he had one too many to drink—Dutch, Hosea, and John. She finds his concern and loyalty admirable. She wonders if those were synonymous in his world, with love and affection.

Once, and only once, he told her his father had been an outlaw too. Had left he and his mother for months on end without a shred of money or anything, and would return as though nothing at all had happened. He resented him for that, she knew. And she figures it’s why he sends so much money and takes Isaac out as often as he can. But at the end of the day it’s still just her and her son in the attic room of a restaurant.

She sings Isaac to sleep, puts the bucket under the newly sprung leak near the window, and goes to bed. 

* * *

 

She wonders what he’d do if she told him she wanted to leave.

To take the money he gave her and get out of there.

To Kentucky, or Kansas. Or even California. She had a good head on her shoulders and could shoot now. She’d make out just fine and see to it her baby would too. She’d be damned before she found herself to be an old woman in that same old town...

She returns the cloth, revolver, and gun oil to their place beside the ten dollars Arthur sent recently in her drawer, puts Isaac on her hip, and heads downstairs to open the restaurant. 

Gretchen had left for Chicago a few days prior for some family business, leaving her in charge of the restaurant and over Joseph Reid, the boy who ran her errands and brought wood in for the stove throughout the day. 

She unlocks the front door and goes to the rear of the establishment to check on Joseph, who seemingly had been daydreaming before the door opened and scrambled towards the chopping block when the door opened.

“We open in one hour, Joseph,” she chastises. “ _One hour_ , you hear me?”

“Yes, ma’am.”

She leaves him to it, turning to find some breakfast for Isaac and it’s as she’s perusing the cabinets that she notices.

Does a double take.

Pats her hip for a gun that isn’t there.

The front door is wide open.


End file.
